Yes I know I should be writing part 2 of the day nothing happened in Syndicate, but this just happened and was more interesting. In other news, I have made one of those Twitter account things, it seems this internet thing is really taking off and twitter is where all the cool kids hang out. Since I want to be a cool kid, I decided I should probably sign-up as well.

Last night our corp had a cov-ops roaming operation. If nullsec pvp can be defined as a high paced quake DM, then cloaky WH roaming is more like thief the dark project. Water arrows and all. It consists mostly of watching people do things until they do something interesting and you step in to stop them from doing that by blowing them up. Fun all around.

Unfortunately, WH-space was empty. Not just the normal, everyone is cloaked empty, but really really empty. After collectively scanning about 25 wormholes, and finding absolutely nothing of interest, we became tired of it and just decided to call it quits. Better to stop early then to go on burning everyone out.

Luckily this freed up my time to head out into Syndicate again. So I did the 20 odds jumps to Syndicate (Yes, I should really get jump clones one of these days), and entered my trusty Thrasher.

Unfortunately not much happened that evening, but I did get in a little dance with some Agony pilots again. I don’t know what it is, but agony just seems to really love flying nice and engageable frigates. Other pilots I see always seem to be flying small fleets of BC’s, solo T3’s and other stuff I can’t engage in my little Thrasher.

Either way, I had just been waiting for a roaming gang to pass trough as I warp to the gate. Before I decide to jump a jaguar appears on d-scan and shortly after lands next to me on the gate. An Agony jaguar. So we start a little dance. He however seemed reluctance to engage, I suspected he just wanted to have me aggress so he could jump and move on. As such I decided to pre-empt this by jumping first, giving him the option to either leave, or continue but possibly get caught by me.

Not long after he jumps trough as well. I burn for him, scram him, and start pelleting this pilot with projectile ammo. He decides this isn’t a battle he can win and burns back to the gate and jumps.

I warp off to a tac to wait a bit wondering if he might try to go trough again. Generally one could wait on the gate itself, but if some gang jumps trough you are shit out of luck, so better to play it a little bit defensive.

Not long after an Agony member called Gizznitt jumps trough. This was not the jaguar pilot and also not the other agony pilot who where in the previous system. As he de-cloaks I see he’s flying a sentinel. A Sentinel is the amarr electronic attack ship with bonuses to nos, neut and tracking disruption. EAS’s are generally not considered to be very viable ships because they are literally paper thin.

He starts burning around a bit and launches a flight of drones. Now normally I would engage it without a second though. As long as I can land on top of him he’s dead. If he manages to get range on me then I can’t kill him anymore. But that’s a gamble, for both him and me. But If he gets range I could de-agress and probably live long enough to jump trough the gate. So all considering, this didn’t make sense. Now add to this that not a minute ago I was shooting an agony jaguar and there was a third pilot as well, I figured this was just bait, and I wasn’t feeling lucky enough to take it.

So I warp down to the gate and jumped out, hoping to catch that jaguar on the other side. Instead I was greeted by 3 wolf’s, a jaguar and an enyo. I was frankly unsure if I should feel flattered that they would bring so many AF’s to kill me. I try to warp off and succeed in doing so. I’m not sure if they tried catching me, which makes me wonder if it was just coincidence or if it was indeed how it looked.

It was getting late so I decided to just dock up and call it a night.

So today I log in and start roaming around. I was being followed by that same agony pilot called Gizznitt again, but I had seen he was in a Helios so I figured he was just scouting, the 2 or 3 jumps i did where a very common route. The Helios wasn’t cloaked, but these non-WH people are strange like that.

Then I noticed a wolf on d-scan, as I find it, it turns out to be an agony pilot. While I begin to question if anyone but agony flies assault frigs in Syndicate I give chase. He seems to be actually paying attention and I don’t manage to catch it, as we reach 31-MLU I lose him. But I had also noticed that Gizznitt had been jumping with us. He was just a little behind. So I figured he might have been scouting that wolf to 31-MLU perhaps? I’m not sure, but as good an explanation as any.

I decide to hold cloak a bit and wait till the Helios jumps in. If I can’t catch the wolf, then perhaps if I’m ultra lucky I can catch the cov-ops. The holding of cloak mostly to throw off anyone watching d-scan. The idea is quite silly, since catching a cov-ops isn’t something done easily, if he doesn’t want to be caught you aren’t catching it. But people make mistakes, and it wouldn’t cost me anything to try. Who knows, that wolf pilot might try to get back on the gate if the Helios pilot reports i tried to attack him.

The Helios pilot jumps in and breaks cloak as I do. A miracle happens, I get a scram on the Helios. “It’s a bit meh”, I think, “but pity kills are kills just the same”. I open fire … What? The Helios is scramming me back? and shooting? and there’s more ewar on me then you can shake a stick at. I’m not getting any closer to him, 2 webs and a TD on me. What the hell is going on here! A drone as well?

With all that ewar and him keeping well out of range I’m doing absolutely no damage while he is slowly but surely wearing me down. I shoot his drone but it’s already too late, this fight got decided in the first 3 seconds and when he got out of my range he had effectively won. So ends my first encounter with this one winged angel, the battle Helios. A fit I knew about, but would never expect to encounter.

After the fight we talk a bit and he had been gunning for me the entire time, following me to have this fight. Cela vie. I’ll have to watch out for this pilot in the future.

About roigon

3 Comments

While we’ll readily ship up for a fight, Agony member’s fly a lot of frigate & cruisers. Many of us enjoy solo PvP, and we honor all 1v1’s that are agreed upon prior to the fight.

Note: This doesn’t mean we have any qualms about baiting and ganking a thrasher that aggresses our scout. Our gang was heading to lower syndicate, and you seemed like a potential target of opportunity last night….

As for my battle helios… It doesn’t have much tank, but does a respectable 140 dps at 9 km’s and has enough EWAR slots to hold a target at optimal range and neutralize most of their [turret] dps… I alternate between 2x webs or 2x tracks depending on my target… Against an autocannon thrasher or a slicer, I fit 2x tracks… against fast ships (dram), 2x webs is the way to go…